Lost in London

Een vriendin uit Zuid-Afrika, Jade, is onlangs na iets van 8 jaar teruggegaan naar Londen waar ze nu voorlopig bij haar (adoptie)ouders woont. Deze week stuurde ze haar eerste nieuwsbrief met de veelzeggende titel 'Jade - A lost anthropologist/writer/artist in London, No.1'. Ze doet verslag van haar pogingen om interessant werk te vinden (At the moment I'm contacting someone who runs a refugee NGO, emailed an anthropologist who runs his own business, spoke to academics at LSE and UEL), haar speurtocht naar goeie salsatenten (People here dress up much less too, or maybe that's the British bad dress sense, and they are dressed up, need to work that one out) en haar eenzame poging om haar boek gepubliceerd te krijgen (Encouragement really appreciated as I'm totally isolated in my writing a book here - missing my writing groups). Ook schenkt ze haar lezers onderstaand gedicht. Ik weet niet of ik haar nu een gezellige e-mail zal terugschrijven of haar nog wat verder moet laten lijden zodat er nog meer moois zal volgen...

BACK TO LONDON FROM CAPE TOWN

London is black. Back to black London.
Grey dead skies flaking like dead skin.
Faces riveted to underground stations, passing
In torn rivers down escalators, elevators,
Refrigerated lives devoid of bare flesh, of exposure
To skin cancer through sun, the red glare
Of no sun-lotion, of mountain-climbing.
I am back to black London, where puddles
Seep, creep beneath my feet,
Where the sky shivers and squeezes between
Building tops, where buy me, buy me,
Is the meaning of lives that pass
Hurried, past each other; no brother, sister,
Only madam, mister; faces that I try
To catch a piece of light within, only
To see it shiver, fragment, glance away
In flurried moments on the tube, on street
Corners. Like their bodies, Londoners bury
Their hearts deep within; never exposed
But tucked under layers of self, weatherproof
Clothing, and armoured minds.

© Jade Gibson 2006